[en] Butembo, a small town in the humid tropical region, is a typical case of, a city with an exceptionally rapid population growth. The spontaneous concentration of populations due to uncontrolled migration on a relatively small territory has led to urban sprawl. Soil sealing of large areas caused by a rapid spatial expansion of the town has generated environmental problems that affect the urban structure. The city is facing diverse hydrological risks. Progressive and regressive gully development accelerates and increasingly affects water availability. In recent years, the urban area faces floods, perceived locally as exceptional. The remobilization of old landslides locally causes damage.

Since its inception, Butembo has never had an objective reference map. The only ones which are available are manually drawn. It is known that land use planning can fight effectively against most major risks in so far as the elements that govern their occurrence are known and that the areas at risk can be located and defined on the basis of objective and scientific criteria.

The main goal of this thesis is to produce a map of and for the city of Butembo which can help to support decision making or at least to understand the reasons of the environmental degradation in the urban area. In that direction, this thesis leads to editing a map of hydrological risks. It is based on approaches combining remote sensing and terrain activities. A detailed analysis of rainfall events is made to see if the rains did influence the environmental problems in the town of Butembo.

The results reveal an exceptional urban expansion. The urban sprawl of Butembo increased from 2,39 km² in 1957 to 85,83 km² in 2008, approximately 54 % of 158,95 km². This increase in urban area is the result of exceptional population growth in the town. Indeed, the population rose from 9 653 in 1957 to 581 449 inhabitants in 2008. This urbanization has resulted in a new land use with all the consequences on the urban landscape.

Since 1957 valley and hillslope gullying remained all the time confined spatially within the diachronic urbanized expansions. Urbanization precedes the development of gullies and these are confined to areas where the runoff coefficient increased by urbanization. For the time being, there is not yet fusion between progressive and regressive gullies. In the future, flooding threats all the flat valley bottoms in the case nothing is done. Landslides are active and are in the creep phase. 11 of the 16 landslides inventoried are partially co-triggered by seismic.

Finally, the damage to the urban structure cannot be ascribed to changes in the rainfall pattern over the 30 last years. All the rains of recent years are normal for the city as their recurrence time is under 6 years. The main cause of environmental problems within the city is urbanization.

Remediation methods require intervention not only in the field of runoff evacuation. The problems must also be tackled upstream, on the slopes, using all the techniques that can prevent or reduce the generation of runoff.